Bill Hume, owner of Nichols Store, stands in front of his store while he holds up a picture of his store that was taken in the 1950's on Dec. 5, 2017 in Rangely. Nichols has been in business in this small northwestern town since 1904 and has been owned by Hume since 1974. The store specializes in animal feel and general merchandize for the community. Not much has changed in the store since the 1950's except that Hume no longer sells gas and he popped the top of the roof to give it a bigger front facade and a pitched roof.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Colorado State highway 64 turns into a quiet Main street on Dec. 5, 2017 in Rangely.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Wes Dunn enjoys a cup of coffee and breakfast while the morning sun streams in at the Main Street Cafe on Dec. 5, 2017 in Rangely.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

A man shops at White River Market on Dec. 5, 2017 in Rangely.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Bill Hume, owner of Nichols Store, comes outside to help a customer get out of her car at his store on Dec. 5, 2017 in Rangely.

RANGELY — In front of the True Value hardware, customers dash from trucks — keys still in the ignition, engines still rumbling — to the store’s door. Far from the big city, in white-rock mesa country in northwestern Colorado, Rangely is the kind of place where you can leave your car running as you run into Rodger Polley’s store for a minute. Even if you pause for small talk with one of the employees, you can count on your truck being right where you left it when you leave.

It’s what brought Polley back to this town of 2,000 or so that he grew up in, and what makes him continue to invest in his business here, so his two kids can grow up in this community as well.

“We’re an isolated, small town, so you know a lot about a lot of folks, whether they like it or not,” Polley said with a laugh as he stood among the major home appliances in the back of his store. “And they know about you, so that’s just the way it is. I like that, because it’s community, versus, I worked in (Grand) Junction for 13 years in retail, and you don’t get to know any customers — you just don’t.”

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

True Value owner Rodger Polley, far left, oversees his managers Chris England, with ball cap and Nathan Pearce in back, as they help customers at his busy shop on Dec. 5, 2017 in Rangely.

Polley’s store is busy. But Rangely residents often have to turn to either Amazon or larger communities with big-box stores for some of their needs.

As in other remote towns across Colorado, business owners in Rangely operate in a challenging environment — they’re a critical resource for those who live in the region yet face growing competition for the local retail dollar. Additional obstacles, such as a downturn in the oil industry that has created economic challenges in many rural areas of Colorado, demand that they draw on all their reserves of resilience and adaptability.

The leakage of retail revenue outside the community doesn’t just create a challenge for Rangely’s small business owners — it hits the town coffers. Town Manager Peter Brixius estimates the town loses 75 to 80 percent of its potential retail sales, or as much as $60 million, to larger neighboring communities a few hours drive away. That calculates to roughly $2.25 million annually in lost sales taxes, he said.

It’s an especially hard hit to a boom-and-bust oil and gas town, where both individual livelihoods and the town budget are often in symbiosis with the price of crude.

“The revenue fluctuation is actually kind of scary,” Brixius said. In his nine and a half years on the job, he’s seen annual revenues fluctuate by up to 60 percent. “We’re at the bottom of that curve right now. And that means we curtail a lot of capital spending in those years, hoping something will turn some time in the future. But in spite of that we’ve managed to get quite a bit done.”

The town of Rangely is situated where it is because of the Rangely oil field. Eighty-eight percent of the town’s assessed value is tied to oil and gas, said Katelin Cook, the economic development coordinator for Rio Blanco County, over coffee at Main Street cafe, one of a handful of restaurants in Rangely where a visitor can grab breakfast. County Commissioner Jeff Rector, between sips of coffee, confirmed the number. Wild economic swings are the norm here, Rector said.

“I’ve been doing it so long it’s part of life. You save when it’s good and hope you saved enough.”

Residents have been talking about diversification for “probably four decades,” he said, but “People don’t worry about the boat sinking until there’s a hole in the side of it.”

Four or five years ago, some folks in county government got tired of patching the hole in the boat. Brixius said that’s when the county commissioner’s office started the economic development office and hired Cook.

“About that same time they hired a gentleman, Blake Mobley, to head up their IT dept, and he was instrumental in putting together the planning and funding for the broadband,” Brixius said, referring to the county’s recent multimillion-dollar infrastructure upgrade that has brought speedy internet to Rangely and Meeker.

In the ensuing years, Rangely and Rio Blanco County have applied for and won awards and grants to aid efforts to boost the climate there for retail businesses. In the process, tourism and retail have emerged as potential economic drivers the town wants to chase.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Main Street in Rangely on Dec. 5, 2017.

“In order to expand retail, you have to have people coming through,” said Konnie Billgren, executive director of the Rangely Chamber of Commerce. In addition to The Tank Center for Sonic Arts, an old water tank outside of Rangely turned aural attraction, Rangely brings in hunters, is home to the state’s only natural rock-crawl park for 4-wheeling enthusiasts and hosts an off-highway vehicle rally and a hang-gliding event. Billgren said they also have slickrock for mountain bikers and — drawing from her years in outside sales before moving to Rangely two years ago — landed her pitch: “Honey, we are a lot nicer than Moab.”

Polley has been running Rangely’s True Value for 14 years. In that time, he has expanded the store, first into the old drug store space next door, then back into the alley, where he sells lumber, then across the street, where he opened a garden center.

“When I built the garden center, people in town were like, ‘Why would you do that?’ The community needed one, and I felt that every spring, people were driving all over the planet to find a tree in Junction or Vernal or something.”

“It’s not a huge moneymaker,” he said. “It’s kind of labor intensive, it’s kind of stressful — you’ve got actual live things that you’re in care of there for three or four months — but it keeps my crew employed.”

Polley has expanded during boom times.

“I invested in footprint, and I invested in inventory, and I invested in long-term employees,” he said. “You’re investing in a lot to prepare for the downside. … You can’t just save cash, that doesn’t keep the business ball rolling forward.”

Meanwhile, residents still drive to Vernal and Grand Junction for goods — especially groceries. Rangely’s current grocery store, White River Market, is part-grocer, part-hardware store. An economic development study commissioned by local authorities flagged the town’s lack of a full-fledged grocery store as a barrier to getting more people to move to Rangely — to take advantage of the broadband, for example.

Elizabeth Robinson Wiley, a ceramics artist and publisher of Home on the Rangely, a lifestyle magazine, noted that though it might be surprising to those who live on the Front Range, it’s not a big deal for people in Rangely to buy pantry goods online and drive to Vernal or another town to stock up on produce and other groceries.

“I go out of town once a month max, and what you do is you just plan ahead,” she said. “You meal plan. It’s not that hard, it just takes getting the hang of it.”

Robinson Wiley has a tiny ceramics studio on Main Street with retail space in the front, but the downturn has affected her business.

“I don’t have business hours at the moment,” she said. “It dried up too much.”

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Artist, writer and potter Elizabeth Robinson Wiley stands for a portrait in her studio on Main Street on Dec. 5, 2017 in Rangely.

“Everything just kind of crashed a few years ago,” Robinson Wiley said. “We’ve been in one of the biggest busts that Rangely has ever had in the past few years.”

Even though residents buy online and leave for certain things, having a Family Dollar store in town has made it easier to pick up some things in Rangely, said Heather Zadra, who was visiting Robinson Wiley’s studio on a December afternoon.

“I remember when the Dollar came, I was like, socks and underwear, yes!” Zadra said. “There was a stretch of time when you could not get underwear and socks — that wasn’t happening in town — and that was pre-Amazon Prime.”

Zadra teaches at Rangely’s Colorado Northwestern Community College, as does Robinson Wiley’s husband.

“The college campus is a big aspect of our community and our economy,” Brixius said. “We have a really superior flight program. …So part of the economic development is looking for opportunities for expansion of the flight program, the dental hygiene program and the flight maintenance program.”

As the county and the town work toward their economic diversity goals, Hume, owner of the Nichols Store, a few blocks west on Rangely’s main street from True Value, will keep doing what he has always done to survive economic downturns — work hard.

At the back of Nichols Store, past the sacks of sheep feed and the 3.2 percent beer in the glass-doored refrigerators, just beyond one of the rows of framed family photos, is a small stairwell that leads out back. Here on the gravel lot that slopes up from the store is an essential component of his business: his delivery trucks.

“Yesterday I started at 4 in the morning,” he said, his exhale puffing a cloud into the cold morning sunshine. He went through the day’s work, which included delivering water to customers working in the oil field and running down to Grand Junction for milk deliveries. His work day wrapped up at 9 p.m.

He bought the old Nichols Store in 1974. It needed a new roof. “We had more pots and pans in the store than groceries in 1974,” he said. When the Nichols Store sold groceries, he was a grocer. He sells feed and other odds and ends there now. He’s also a meat-cutter, he said. He moves around the store and the back lot like a man who isn’t used to sitting down.

“There ain’t nothin’ I haven’t done,” he said. “That’s the only reason I’m still here. The only thing is, I haven’t had a life since 1974. Life, meaning, there’s either work or work. I work seven days a week.”

A lifetime of hard work through Rangely’s boom-and-bust cycles hasn’t left him lacking a mischievous side.

“I’m 66.” He paused. “If you turn it upside down, I’m 99.” And he laughed, hard.

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

A farmer gets into his truck after shopping at Nichols Store on Dec. 5, 2017 in Rangely.

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